WordPress is one of the most celebrated platform for developing web applications and blogs etc. It is user friendly, search engine friendly and is such a power packed development framework that it hardly comes as a surprise to find out that it is the most popular and frequently downloaded system for powering web applications.
However, if you feel stuck with this application, for the pages are taking longer than usual to load and there isn’t anything that you can do about it, you have stumbled upon the right place. Below we shall discuss 8 amazing ways with which you can greatly improve the performance of your WP application. Kindly read ahead to discover more:
8 Great Ways to Boost up WP’s Performance
First up, Update your System
We go to the ends of the world in order to optimize our WordPress based web applications, and yet we are the ones causing the leaks in its performance, by still using the older and stagnant versions of the platform and its various plugins. In order to boost up the performance, ensure that you have employed only the latest version of the platform, and all the plugins and other functionalities that have you deployed, are running in their latest and most advanced version.
Updating the WP blog or website is not only a better practice, but also ensures higher and much advanced functioning and security of the application. And there is no reason why you should decide against keeping the backend architecture well updated.
Now, Get a WP Caching Plugin
If you have not gotten a Caching plugin in the backend of your WordPress, we really doubt whether you are serious at all regarding boosting the performance of the website or not. For any WordPress user, the sure shot way to significantly improve the performance of the website is by getting a caching mechanism right in the backend structure. W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are two widely used plugins which you can utilize to leverage from the same.
Also, optimize the images for better results
Images play a key role in both – bringing more and newer visitors to your website, and boosting up the performance as well, if only you don’t fail to capitalize upon the same. Firstly, it completely fails us to understand why bloggers and WP site owners would not use IMG ALT tag to optimize the images with proper keywords and make the images appear meaningful for the search engine crawlers.
Furthermore, you must resize and filter the images prior to uploading them, and do not rely on the browser to that for you. Use image manipulation software and adequately resize them prior to uploading them on the website. This way, not only would the images attract newer visitors from myriad sources, but would also not make the website clumsy in loading etc.
Replace PHP queries with HTML, wherever possible
The browser takes an irritatingly long span of time to load and work around with PHP queries. What you can do instead is to replace these queries with static HTML, wherever you deem perfect. HTML is easily read and accessed by the web browsers, and hence more the HTML, better is going to be loading speed, and hence the performance.
Update the database at regular intervals
When you keep the database optimized time to time, you save yourself hefty amount of data which otherwise would have been wasted to optimize the database and the site, after the damage had already begun to happen. The plugin which you may want to use for this step is ‘myPhpAdmin.’ This plugin updates the database before you may even drop your hat and makes it look perfectly seamless.
Kick out all the plugins that you don’t require
At times we download various plugins in jiffy, perhaps as an act of impulse, but we make no bones about it when we tell you that extra plugins are only going to make the web page heavy and hence lethargic. These plugins are not any old fond memories which you would cherish. If you do not use them, kick them out of the system RIGHT NOW! Most of the plugins are free anyway, and so you may install and utilize them again, as and when you require. Likewise you may consider opting for offshore WordPress development, and hire well learnt and skilled offshore experts to customize the plugins, and get them to completely meet your requirement set.
Rethink the choice of your web hosting service provider
If you have taken almost every major step that we or someone else mentioned, then probably it is time to break the ties with your web hosting service provider, and hire a new one, or perhaps revise the hosting plans for now. Whether you confront the current hosting services provider to own up to the lack of performance, and provide a better deal, or you get in touch with some other services provide, that is your call, but if you wish to boost up the performance, this is a step you are eventually going to have to take.
Finally, keep a regular tab on the performance of the website
We all understand that performance optimization is not a onetime affair and you probably would have to be at the top of your game at all times, in order to check any anomalies and weed them out of the architecture. We shall leave you with a code which you may include in the backend of the website, and it will let you know as and when the optimization work is needed to be carried out next with your WP website.
Just mention – ‘<?php echo get_num_queries(); ?> queries in <?php timer_stop(1); ?> seconds’ in the backend of the template and you would get all the required insights regarding the performance of the website.
This brings us to the end of this post. We hope that these tips would help you enhance the performance of your WordPress website. For superior quality results, please hire WordPress developers from an offshore center. And do not forget to share with us your opinions about everything that we just discussed above in the article. We shall await your comments and feedbacks.
